JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – LSE-listed Rainbow Rare Earths has raised £2.8-million through the placement of 20-million new ordinary shares with new and existing shareholders.
The funding will strengthen the company’s balance sheet and enable it to bring forward its growth plans at the Gakara rare earth project, in Burundi.
The proceeds of the fundraising will be used to accelerate the production ramp-up at Gakara by fast-tracking the development of new mining areas; for the purchase of additional mining fleet; and for a drilling campaign to investigate recently identified anomalies at Gakara.
“We are delighted with the strong support that we have received for this fundraising exercise, and we are pleased to welcome a number of new institutional shareholders to the register. [This year] has been a transformational year for us as we delivered on our overarching objective [of] achieving first production and sales of rare earth concentrate from Gakara within 11 months,” commented CEO Martin Eales.
The company reported last week that it had exported its first shipment of rare earth concentrate from Gakara.
“Looking now to 2018, our focus will increasingly include the development of new areas of mineralisation and the identification of future sources of ore to ensure we have a long-term, sustainable mine producing high-grade concentrate from multiple openpit operations.
“We have already begun this process, reporting significant exploration upside at Gakara through a recently completed airborne magnetic survey and, utilising these new funds, we will be able to implement a drilling campaign on these exciting anomalies in addition to accelerating our productions plans,” said Eales.
Rainbow is targeting a production rate of 5 000 t/y by the end of 2018.